Something Dangerous

by Penny Vincenzi

  George MacColl was so excited he literally jumped up and down in Barty’s office; ‘I just never in my wildest dreams thought this would happen. Maybe a kind letter, rather than just a rejection slip. You really think it could do well?’

  Years of living with Celia had taught Barty professional caution.

  ‘We must hope so,’ she said carefully, ‘and of course we will only be publishing a very small number initially, let’s say fifteen hundred at the most. That’s far better, you see, than putting out thousands and running the risk of them all coming back.’

  But George MacColl was not to be cast down; he begged her to let him take her to lunch and when she refused that, proposed tea. ‘After all, if we are going to work together, we need to know one another well.’

  Over tea, he asked her to call him Geordie (‘not many people have nicknames longer than their real ones’) and promised to do exactly what she told him with his manuscript. ‘I’ll cut it, lengthen it, make the beginning the end, whatever you want.’

  Barty told him he’d change his attitude when he was actually asked to do any of those things, but she didn’t actually think that the book – called Brilliant Twilight – needed any really serious editing. MacColl had a natural and deceptively easy style, economical and touched with an irony that set the book well above the standard run of popular fiction. She was extremely excited about it; and her meeting that afternoon at Scribners was to present it to one of the buyers there.

  She had been there several times now, to the beautiful building on Fifth Avenue, it was her favourite of all the New York bookshops, with its book-lined galleries, rather like a very grand library, set above the well of the main store. As she walked up the grand dividing staircase that led to the galleries, she recognised, with a stab of excitement, Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor at the house of Scribner. She smiled at him, knowing that he would not have the faintest idea who she was; he inclined his head to her gently, and walked on. Barty looked after him wondering if any young editor would ever say of her that they had passed the Barty Miller on the stairs at Lyttons.

  James Barton of Scribners had read and liked Brilliant Twilight; he said yes, they would take ten and see how they went.

  ‘Will you be doing posters, or anything like that?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Barty. ‘Of course. Let me know how many you want and I’ll supply them.’

  ‘One, my dear, will be quite sufficient. Possibly two, in case of one getting damaged. I really don’t think this book is going to be a big seller, good as it is. You’ll have a lot of competition, next year, you know. There’s a new Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, quite marvellous. And a Hemingway. And Gone with the Wind is still going to be selling very well.’

  ‘Well – ’ said Barty, ‘perhaps not as big as them. But not small either, Mr Barton. Now I have some other titles to discuss with you, if you have time.’

  Oliver’s condition had stabilised somewhat; he was in a private room, now at the King Edward VII Hospital for officers, breathing with some difficulty, and looking somehow pitifully small.

  But he was unconscious, and had not moved or spoken since his collapse; he had had quite a minor heart attack, Dr Carter the specialist said, followed by a rather more severe stroke: ‘Not so very unusual, but it’s impossible to say yet exactly how serious the stroke was. Time will reveal whether his speech or indeed his motor skills have been affected. He needs absolute rest and quiet. The next few days should show an improvement, but there is nothing we can do to hasten that.’

  Celia was sitting by him, holding his hand; Venetia and a horribly shaken Giles stood staring at him.

  ‘He looks so – old,’ said Venetia, her voice hushed, ‘and as if he’s not here at all.’

  ‘Well – we must be grateful that he is,’ said Dr Carter, ‘and of course, at least fifty per cent of all stroke patients make a good recovery.’

  ‘Really?’ said Giles. ‘Is that really so?’

  ‘Oh yes. But – as I say, there are no certainties.’

  ‘Could I – could I have a word with you? Privately?’

  ‘Certainly Mr Lytton. Lady Celia, Mrs Warwick, please excuse us.’

  The look of absolute contempt Celia gave Giles as he left the room, would have shaken a stronger personality than his. She knew what he was going to ask: and she despised him for it. She preferred to carry her own guilt and fear alone.

  Dr Carter was as reassuring as he could be; the risk of strokes increased with high blood pressure and a narrowing of the arteries.

  ‘I have to say that your father shows no sign of either of those conditions so far as we can tell; but a third risk factor is what we call atrial fibrillation, which is an irregularity of heartbeat, most common in a heart that has been weakened, in this instance, probably by the heart attack.’

  Giles took a deep breath. ‘And – could that be caused by stress?’

  ‘The stroke no, the heart attack possibly. But of course your father is not strong, never has been since the war. Don’t worry, Mr Lytton; he’s holding his own so far. That’s a good sign. We have to look for signs of what we call lightening, that is, his regaining consciousness, in however small a way; provided that happens quite soon, then the prognosis is good.’

  Giles nodded and thanked him and went back into the room; Celia looked at him.

  ‘Giles, I think you should get back to Lyttons. There seems no point all of us staying here. Venetia has spoken to Adele, she’s going to fly back from Paris, so much better than that wretched boat train, and Kit is coming home from school this evening.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘There is nothing you can do here.’ She placed a slight emphasis on the word ‘you’; Giles flinched.

  ‘Mother, I’m so – sorry. If – that is – if my – my outburst was a cause of this in any way.’

  Celia looked at him; her face unreadable.

  ‘Whatever the cause,’ she said, ‘it has happened. We can only hope and pray. Now do get back to Lyttons; and send a cable to Barty, please. She’ll want to know, and possibly may even come back. He’s so fond of her, she did so much for him when he got back from the war, who knows what her presence might do. Oh, and you’d better send one to Robert as well. And Jack and Lily, naturally.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Giles, ‘yes of course. I’ll send them immediately.’

  Which he did: one to Hollywood, two to Barty, at both her home address and at Lyttons, and one to Robert at Sutton Place.

  It was still quite early in New York, so Barty might not yet have left home; she should get it very quickly.

  He was not to know, of course, that Barty had not slept at her Gramercy Park apartment for two nights; or that she had left Lyttons at ten o’clock New York time for an appointment; and had then gone on to meet Laurence Elliott for lunch.

  They lunched at the Colony Club. Barty very seldom agreed to lunch, because she couldn’t spare the time; but today, with meetings running through the day, it suited her schedule to do so.

  Laurence was very fond of the Colony partly because it was the only restaurant in New York with that great new delight, air conditioning, and because the soft-shell crabs, a passion of his, were the best anywhere. Laurence had also told Barty over their first lunch at the Colony, and it had amused her considerably, that there were very few heterosexual males there at lunchtime: ‘It’s for ladies and fairies; the men stay in their clubs.’

  Barty liked it too; it was, as she said to him the first time he took her there, ‘like going to the pictures. I mean movies. Just look at those chandeliers’.

  The ebb and flow of celebrities was dazzling, the film people – Marlene Dietrich was frequently there, Gertie Lawrence when she was in town, Noël Coward, Greta Garbo, the Astaires – and always, as well, representatives of New York’s highest society – people like the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Whitneys. She would sit there studying them as Laurence pointed them out. She preferred the American aristocracy to the English, she told him: ‘mos
tly because they’ve done something, made their own money, created their own fame’.

  The other thing Barty liked about the Colony was the fact that the proprietor, Gene Cavalleros, extended endless credit to people he liked, victims of the Depression; the story of how he said to film director Preston Sturges, ‘eat here free until you get back on your feet’, was famous but only one of many.

  The other thing Laurence had found it necessary to explain to her was that the position of his table – in the first enclave of the restaurant – denoted his own position in New York; ‘that position is not easily come by, Barty, it has to be earned.’

  She teased him about that at first and it was a mistake, it made him angry; he attached huge importance to such things and it was, she supposed, symptomatic of his insecurity. Laurence was not used to being teased about anything; but most of all he wasn’t teased about his own status.

  When Barty had left him that day, he sat staring after her for a while, and drank another coffee; then he signed the bill, asked for his coat and walked out into the street. It was a perfect day, a Friday; he had planned that after lunch they should go straight back to Elliott House and then leave for South Lodge, his house at Southampton, Long Island. He had taken Barty there only once and only for the day; her agreeing to spend the whole weekend there had delighted him. He had never known anyone like her before; her fierce independence, and her refusal to do anything if it did not meet her own rather severe criteria baffled as much as it enraged him.

  ‘You said you loved me,’ he said irritably, the first time she refused to stay at home and in bed with him one morning. ‘How can you rush off to that ridiculous office of yours when you could be making love with me?’

  ‘I do love you,’ she said, ‘but I have to go to work. The two things are not mutually exclusive.’

  ‘Of course they are. You don’t have to work, you certainly don’t need to work.’

  ‘Laurence, I both have and need to work. I have to because I love it, and it matters to me and I need to because I have a salary to earn.’

  ‘I could give you all the money you want.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said laughing, ‘I want to earn my money, Laurence, not take it from someone for nothing. You of all people should understand that. Besides, you are passionate about your own work, you love that bank, I’m surprised you don’t understand about mine.’

  ‘I suppose this is all some nonsense about equality for women.’

  ‘Partly yes, it is. Successful women – and there aren’t many in publishing – are very important at the moment, simply in proving what can be done. When Celia Lytton speaks at a literary dinner, it gives a signal to other women, young, hopeful women, that they too can succeed. So don’t try and divert me from my career, Laurence, please.’

  He did: over and over again, and with mounting irritation. But with no success whatsoever.

  He decided to take his car down to her apartment in Gramercy Park, and wait outside it for her return; she had said she would be there at six, and that way they would at least be able to leave for Long Island at the earliest possible moment.

  It was already four-thirty; on a whim, he told his driver to stop outside the literally dazzling Harry Winston, the spectacular jewellery store on Fifth. He hadn’t bought Barty much jewellery yet; the first piece – a necklace from Cartier – she had gently refused, saying it was lovely, but she couldn’t possibly accept such a thing, it put their relationship on the wrong basis as she saw it.

  She did accept a pair of diamond clips for her birthday and had worn them a lot; but today he wanted something more personal, to mark their first weekend. He regarded the two days as deeply significant, a commitment from her to their relationship and, for that matter, to himself. The house at Southampton was very special to him, he had built it himself, it was his own creation, not inherited and as different as anything could be from Elliott House; he was longing to spend time with her there. He did not share it lightly; he had hosted house parties there, entertained groups of people, but he had never taken a woman there alone before Barty. Barty did not know that yet; but he planned to tell her that night, over dinner, to try to explain to her how much the house meant to him and how much he wanted her to share it. Giving her a piece of jewellery at that moment would etch the occasion still deeper into their lives; and he wanted that very much.

  Choosing jewellery for her was not easy, it could not be overtly extravagant, she wouldn’t like it and it wouldn’t suit her. Her particular brand of beauty demanded quality of an understated kind; after considerable deliberation, he bought a long double strand of pearls, one black, one white, with a diamond clasp. It would suit her absolutely in every way; he asked for it to be wrapped, put it in his pocket and went back to his car, dismissing his driver. He wanted to wait for her alone.

  The meeting at Scribners over-ran; Barty realised as she left that it was too late to go back to Lyttons, they would all be gone. She hailed a taxi and directed it to Gramercy Park.

  Robert was very distressed by the news of Oliver’s condition. He had been shocked by his appearance the last time he had visited England, not only by the way he had aged, but by his look of permanent emaciated exhaustion. He looked at least fifteen years older than Celia, Robert had thought, Celia with her rich beauty, her almost visible energy, her restless pursuit of pleasure and success.

  And Oliver still worked so hard: five days a week at Lyttons and then frequently on into the night in his study at home; Robert had suggested gently that he should retire or at least do less, but Oliver had laughed and said it was unthinkable.

  ‘Too much to do here, far too much and no one remotely capable yet of taking on my role. Besides, Celia would never allow it, she disapproves of anyone who doesn’t work one hundred and ten per cent.’

  He smiled as he said this, but Robert knew there was some truth in it: it seemed harsh at a stage in life when most men could expect a few years’ freedom from the tyranny of work, and a wife who would welcome some time for them to spend together. He had said as much to Felicity; she agreed with him.

  ‘But Celia is not a wife, she is more of a husband. Poor, dear Oliver! I wish—’

  ‘Yes, my dear? What do you wish?’

  But she gave him her gentle, dismissive smile and changed the subject.

  It was Felicity Robert telephoned that morning with the news; she was very upset. Very upset indeed, in fact; more than he would have expected.

  ‘Oh, Robert, how dreadful. How serious is it? When will you know, could you telephone Celia perhaps—’

  ‘I will, this evening. I need to know whether or not I should go over to see him. Whether it merits that: or whether indeed it’s too late. Maud will be so upset, she’s very fond of her uncle—’

  ‘Well – do please let me know the moment you have any news. Of whatever nature, please. Oh dear, Barty will be so upset. Have you spoken to her about it?’

  ‘No,’ said Robert shortly, ‘as you know Barty and my family are not communicating very closely at the moment. Well, not communicating at all.’

  ‘I forgot, just for a moment. That is the most extraordinary relationship. And the most extraordinarily malevolent stroke of fate. That – vile Laurence and dear, sweet, innocent Barty—’

  ‘Perhaps not so innocent,’ said Robert. ‘Laurence is extremely rich.’

  ‘Robert! That’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘Nevertheless it’s true. She’s clearly dazzled by him. I constantly hear of them being seen together at places like the Rainbow Room, and so on.’

  ‘Well he’s very attractive. Whatever else. But – does she know all the dreadful things he did? Plotting against you and John—’

  ‘Of course. Maud told her. Barty just said she couldn’t believe it and if it was true, then his terrible childhood had to be largely to blame.’

  ‘Classic Laurence. I’m sure he trades on that terrible childhood of his all the time. So attractive to women, that sort of thin
g.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Robert.

  ‘Of course. It’s a cause. We all like those. We think we can take it all away, the alcoholism or the cruelty or whatever, make it better by our love. Not always true, I’m afraid.’ She sighed. ‘Well anyway, Barty will want to know about Oliver. I would imagine she’d be in touch immediately.’

  ‘Let’s say I hope so. Anyway, I’ll cable Celia later in the day and ask for more news. And of course I’ll let you know.’

  But Barty did not phone Robert about Oliver; not by lunchtime, not even by the evening. Distressed, Robert telephoned Stuart Bailey to try and speak to her, fearing that she might not have heard the news, and was told she had been out of the office at meetings all day so she wouldn’t have got it.

  ‘But we did open the cable and it made clear that one had been sent to her apartment. So – she surely will have got that one. I’m sorry, Mr Lytton, I’ll tell her the minute I hear from her.’

  The house where Barty lived in Gramercy Park, just south of the park itself, was divided into three apartments; Barty’s was on the first floor (which gave her a balcony), a young man lived on the ground floor and the top floor was the home of Elise Curtis, milliner (as she liked to put it) to the gentry. An insufficient number of gentry having become clients of Madame Curtis, she was obliged to make herself extra money by working for one of the downtown clothing factories; working the evening shift meant she earned more and had a little time during the day for her (almost) non-existent clients.

  It was Elise who had signed for the cable for Barty that had arrived at about half past nine that morning; she had knocked on Barty’s door several times but there’d been no reply. She’d obviously left already for work. Elise wasn’t quite sure what to do: mail was always left on a table in the hall, but that seemed rather dangerous – for a cable. Barty might be missing some crucial piece of news. On the other hand, Elise could hardly go running all over New York looking for her. She had enough to do, and besides, she was going away in the morning, to visit her sister for a week’s well-earned holiday. It would be quite safe on the table, surely. And Barty would see it as soon as she got in. She had left it there, set apart from the rest of the mail, so that it was noticeable, and went back to her own apartment.